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I agree that the coding expectations are fine-- and I'm not saying you do this-- but conveying annoyance through pedantic, overly nitpicky, or snarky junior cod

I agree that the coding expectations are fine-- and I'm not saying you do this-- but conveying annoyance through pedantic, overly nitpicky, or snarky junior code reviews is a management and mentorship failure. In any field, someone consistently acting like a know-it-all is indulging their own emotional shortcomings under the guise of enforcing good practices. Firstly, if this is a brand new junior and they didn't have the guidance to avoid this problem in the first place, that's on the senior developer(s). These are on-the-job-learned skills, and the reason junior developers make less money is because they need guidance from seniors figuring out how all of that stuff works. Secondly, if they did have explicit guidance, have been advised to tighten things up a few times, yet can't swing it, the senior developer needs to be a senior developer and empathically help them work through whatever strategic block is causing the problem. Finally, if the junior has been told many times and not cleaned up their practices, the senior developer isn't doing them any favors by playing the role of rankled, imperious elder-- the person is likely not cut out for the role, or needs to spend more time learning, maybe as an intern. It needs to be addressed with their manager so the right person can fill that position. If senior developers don't want to do that then they should work some place that doesn't hire juniors.

ar_lan 3y ago
> but conveying annoyance through pedantic, overly nitpicky, or snarky junior code reviews is a management and mentorship failure Completely agree. If I get a chance, I almost always try to have a conversation (Zoom, in person) instead of writing large walls of text. It's definitely discouraging to, really anybody, to see your review get slammed by someone. Usually, if I see a common pattern or something is just wholly wrong, I try to whiteboard it out with them instead. I hope I've always come across nicer/a good mentor from this. I'm sure someone has disagreed :) -- All in all I completely agree. Senior devs + managers need to set the stage, expectations, and provide the necessary mentorship/utilities needed to accomplish. Also, a pet peeve of mine - one of my first teams I was on, a dev always commented on style issues. It got to the point where numerous junior devs complained and finally some other engineer stepped in and said "I don't disagree with your style comments, but you'd save yourself the headache if you just wrote a linter to catch that automatically." It's a pretty clear example in my mind of someone who finds self-importance in their voice being shown on each code review, when a simple utility would save everyone the headache.
- chefandy 3y ago
  Yes, I agree with all of that. Additionally, it's important that management understands that seniors need the time to actually do these things. You don't just get whatever percent less efficiency with junior developers, it takes time from your senior developers doing their work to help the juniors along.
- whstl 3y ago
  Completely agree about the linter suggestion. Whenever there is a squabble over style in any PR in my team, I ask them to merge, decide afterwards on a single solution and then write a linter rule. Often a custom rule is necessary. IMO the worst codebases to work on are those that have nitpickers that change taste all the time. Newbies join, try to "read the room" and find a lot of code that looks good, so they use it as a template. Only to be nitpicked because "we do things different now".

ar_lan 3y ago

> but conveying annoyance through pedantic, overly nitpicky, or snarky junior code reviews is a management and mentorship failure Completely agree. If I get a chance, I almost always try to have a conversation (Zoom, in person) instead of writing large walls of text. It's definitely discouraging to, really anybody, to see your review get slammed by someone. Usually, if I see a common pattern or something is just wholly wrong, I try to whiteboard it out with them instead. I hope I've always come across nicer/a good mentor from this. I'm sure someone has disagreed :) -- All in all I completely agree. Senior devs + managers need to set the stage, expectations, and provide the necessary mentorship/utilities needed to accomplish. Also, a pet peeve of mine - one of my first teams I was on, a dev always commented on style issues. It got to the point where numerous junior devs complained and finally some other engineer stepped in and said "I don't disagree with your style comments, but you'd save yourself the headache if you just wrote a linter to catch that automatically." It's a pretty clear example in my mind of someone who finds self-importance in their voice being shown on each code review, when a simple utility would save everyone the headache.

chefandy 3y ago
Yes, I agree with all of that. Additionally, it's important that management understands that seniors need the time to actually do these things. You don't just get whatever percent less efficiency with junior developers, it takes time from your senior developers doing their work to help the juniors along.
whstl 3y ago
Completely agree about the linter suggestion. Whenever there is a squabble over style in any PR in my team, I ask them to merge, decide afterwards on a single solution and then write a linter rule. Often a custom rule is necessary. IMO the worst codebases to work on are those that have nitpickers that change taste all the time. Newbies join, try to "read the room" and find a lot of code that looks good, so they use it as a template. Only to be nitpicked because "we do things different now".